This blog has served as a place to reflect and analyze on my journey to flipped learning in my high school math classes from 2011-2014.
While I have transitioned to a role as a Digital Learning Coach, this blog still hosts my reflections from 3 years of flipping as well as thoughts from my new journey as a coach and support to teachers in their journey of effectively integrating technology into their curriculum.
Thank you for being a part of my PLN!

One
of the coolest things about my job as a Digital Learning Coach is that
teachers actually apply to be
fellows. It’s about moving willing
teachers from “Good” to “Great”, and is not something that is “forced” on them
by administrators or evaluators.

With
that being said, applying to be a fellow can be very scary for some
teachers. It’s not easy to open up your
classroom and be transparent with your teaching. It’s hard for teachers who aren’t used to
having people in their classroom besides their yearly evaluation to see a
coach as a non-evaluative person. It’s
also hard to open yourself up to moving out of your comfort zone and changing
the dynamic of your classroom.

I
try to summarize my role to teachers like this:

I am a collaborative, non-evaluatory, non-judgmental
thought partner and collaborative colleague who strives to help you enhance
and improve the teaching and learning in your classroom by finding effective,
efficient, engaging, and enjoyable uses of technology. As we work
together, our processes are personalized to fit your needs and desires and our
pace is individualized to challenge you appropriately. My goal is to
meet you where you are and offer you resources that uniquely respond to your
particular needs.

If
teachers are considering being fellows, here are some questions they should
reflect on. I don’t send these out as a list of questions to them, but they do
guide conversations I have with interested fellows.

One of
the first questions teachers who are thinking about applying ask me is, “How
much time will it take?” The general
answer to that question is “1 hour a week during your prep period”, which is
used for coaching meetings where we will plan lessons that incorporate
technology and prepare for implementation.
In addition to that, we ask them to reflect (which I will be
incorporating within the coaching meeting this year), share with others (which
should occur during department, PLC, or staff meetings), and participate in a
few “big” after school events such as a beginning of year Kickoff (meet other
fellows, make some connections) and end of the year Techstravaganza (event for
fellows to share in a mini-conference style).
I try to emphasize that the one prep a week is being used to plan
things that they would already be spending that time doing, but now you have
someone to collaborate and share ideas with, and you have support in trying
things you weren’t sure about before.

More
important that being willing to commit to the “time commitment”, fellows need
to commit to a mindset shift. This goes
along with the questions above. They
need to be open to learning new things, and to trying new things in their
classes. A fellow will not grow if
every suggestion is answered with “That won’t work for my kids” or “I don’t
have time for that in my class”. They
need to be open to the process of reflecting and thinking deeply about their
practice – it’s not easy to open yourself up to things you aren’t sure about,
but they must be open to making mistakes (in a supportive environment) and not
always knowing the answers. It’s okay
if the students know more than you when you are trying out a new tool to help
their learning! Utilize the collective
knowledge of the room to help everyone get better. A fellow needs to have a flexible classroom
approach where everything is not just set in stone the “way it’s always been
done”. If their mindset is not open to
things they haven’t tried before or “changing it up”, it will be very hard to
grow. Being a fellow really is a
professional learning opportunity, and I would argue that it is the best
professional development opportunity a teacher could ever sign up for – and
it’s free!

Not all
fellows begin with that “Open Mindset” described above, but develop it over
the course of the year with the guidance of the coach. I would say that is one of the hardest parts
of being a coach – helping a teacher to shift their mindset so they are open to learning and trying new things,
open to taking risks, and open to making mistakes and learning from them. While it is one of the hardest parts, it's
also one of the most rewarding to be a part of a teacher's journey as they
grow and find success in trying new things!